


Risking Burns

by ixolite (ebouros)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: But no real sneks were harmed during the writing of this fic, Cat Puns, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Moirails, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Trolls (Homestuck), some animal cruelty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 08:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12361413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebouros/pseuds/ixolite
Summary: A one-shot imagining the beginnings of Nepeta and Equius' moirallegiance, set in pre-Sgrub Alternia. The two trolls are visiting Nepeta's forest when an encounter with a giant snake throws a wrench in their plans.





	Risking Burns

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of an older fic, written a few years ago when Homestuck was as peak popularity. English isn't my first language so if you see mistakes don't feel bad pointing them out, it's helpful!

You are Nepeta Leijon, and you hiss angrily under your breath as you are sent rolling across the forest floor, frantically attempting to get a grip on whatever branch, rock or moss you can lay your hands onto.

Helpless to stop your uncontrolled tumbling, you finally crash into the mossy trunk of a tree with a loud thud. Lungs brutally emptied by the blow, you scramble back onto your knees, folded in half by the deep, crippling pain irradiating from your back into your chest.

“Fur real now?”

Your voice is barely a low-pitched grumble as you wheeze through your teeth to try and recover your breath, fighting away the spots that are blackening the periphery of your vision. The cat pun doesn’t even cheer you up.

You lift your head back up and look for the thing that sent you into that tree. Damn you tree, you really had to stand just there, didn’t you? Not cool.        

You spot the giant slitherbeast about 10 meters away from you. Its hood is expanding as it hisses menacingly at the other troll that is accompanying you on this outing: Equius Zahhak, a troll that you’ve grown closer to lately.

Ever since he had learned that you lived in the woods with your lusus, he had begun dropping hints that he wanted you to give him a tour of the area. Equius’ impeccable manners prevented him from being too forward about it, so most of the time it was easy to just ignore his requests…

This time though, you said yes. You were feeling lonely in your hive, the other day, staring at your shipping chart and realizing none of the imaginary relationships featuring yourself were even close to coming true. Then, you had thought about how you had been trolling Equius for a while, and he was somehow still talking to you (even though he had yet to agree to roleplay with you). You had felt grateful for that and had wanted to do something for him in return, to make him happy, and maybe also make sure he didn’t lose interest in you.

You knew bringing a guest to the forest was going to be dangerous, but seeing your acquaintance get all enthusiastic about observing the majestic alternian fauna, you figured, why not? However, he had clearly gotten way more than he had bargained for. 

Equius is himself strong like ten hoofbeasts, but the predation game played by the giant slitherbeasts isn’t about strength. It is about speed, and agility. It is about snaring up the opponent, pinning down each and every one of its limbs and slowly crushing it to death. It is about subtlety. It is also about poison.

Equius returns the slitherbeast’s stare intently, his eyes hidden behind his cracked shades as he tightens his guarding stance. He is clenching both his jagged teeth and his fists slightly, threatening, wearing the most serious and sinister expression that you have ever seen painted on the face of a troll your age. He is also sweating profusely, his muscles tensing under his skin flushed blue by the strain, his pitch-black hair damp and slick. But then again he’s always sweaty.

He looks supremely confident: even in such a dire moment, you can’t help but marvel at how well he handles being in the face of danger. Just any other troll might have panicked, fainted, or run away when the two of you accidentally walked into the breeding grounds of this freshly migrated supersized serpent. But this is Equius fucking Zahhak, and right now he’s staring a bloodthirsty monster right in the eye like it’s nothing more than a cuddly rodent. For a second, you almost wonder who is really at a disadvantage between the enraged 15 meters long snake and the young troll.

The hissing slitherbeast dives down, teeth bare, trying to inflict its poisonous bite onto the young troll, but Equius was ready for it. Dodging the attack with a swift jump to the right, he follows up with a powerful punch to the side of the reptile’s head. An ominous crack erupts from the beast’s skull as it cries and yanks its head back up violently, blinded by rage and pain.

Equius readies himself for the monster’s next move, ready to strike as soon as the slitherbeast’s head is in range of his fists again. However, instead of repeating its previous unsuccessful attack, the slitherbeast stretches tall and unhooks its jaw, opening its mouth to the maximum, as its neck starts being agitated with vigorous muscular spasms.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!”

You ignore your hurting ribcage and scurry as fast as you can towards your friend, who in reaction turns to look at you with an expression of complete incomprehension. You have no time to explain, though. You quickly pounce on him, and, circling your wiry arms around his hips, you roughly drive the two of you onto the mossy ground. Just in time, you manage to get Equius out of the way of the shower of highly corrosive gastric acid spewed out by the slitherbeast. If you hadn’t managed to duck him out of that foaming bile fountain, he surely would have been cooked medium-rare by the chemicals.

Not giving the monster any time to prepare another attack, you get back on your feet, crouching, and draw your claws from your strife specibus. Extending your right arm while your left one still instinctively clutches at your hurting chest, you aim for the back of the creature’s throat, still visible through its wide open jaw.

You jump.

You like to think of yourself as a good huntress, and a good huntress knows the weakness of her prey. That’s what your lusus taught you. The weakness of the giant slitherbeasts, as you learned from experience, is having their uvula brutally torn out of their mouths.

Then again, you think almost absentmindedly as you thrust your clawed hand into the beast’s mouth, that sounds like it could be the weakness of any other creature.

You fall back onto your feet, the fleshy organ skewered onto your claws. For a moment, everything is perfectly still. The snake stops attacking and stares at you with an expression not unlike surprise. Anxious, you stare at the perfectly immobile monster. Did it work?

And then, suddenly, like a switch got turned on somewhere in its reptilian brain, the slitherbeast hisses loudly, trashing in pain and anger, and speeds away messily, breaking branches and trees in its hasty escape. As the snake’s noises grow farther and farther, every vibration left from the previous struggle fades into a blissful silence.

Incredibly relieved, you stow your claws away in your strife specibus, releasing your breath at last and rubbing the leftover pain out of your torso. Behind you, Equius slowly gets back on his feet, dusting his clothing from the dirt, twigs and leaves. He nods at you curtly and speaks in his usual verbose, raspy tone. Hearing his voice somehow makes everything better.

“I offer you my thanks. My ignorance about this opponent would have caused my demise if not for your timely intervention. It is a shame that we had to maim such an admirable creature, though.”

You can’t help but shiver, a faint olive-colored blush rising to your cheeks against your will. You know you don’t deserve his gratitude. You shake your head.

“No, don’t thank me…You don’t have to purrtend it wasn’t my fault. Don’t furget I walked us right into that fucking snake’s territory.”

Equius frowns at you and you return him a toothy apologetic grin. You forgot. Mind your language in front of the last living troll to give two shits about blueblood nobility.

“I mean, I’m sorry, you clumsily explain, eyes pinned towards your muddy blue sneakers. I planned our trip so that we avoided as much danger as pawsible, but I guess we were unfurtunate.”

Equius lifts his chin up and crosses his arms, shaking his head in skepticism. Clearly, he’s refusing to let you take the blame. He opens his mouth to say something, but he closes it back when he sees your gaze linger on a weird blue patch marking his left arm. You step towards him and delicately take his thick, muscled limb in your hands. Surprised, he lets you examine it while staring at you with a weird, indecipherable expression.

“Damn it, uh, I mean, darn it…you got burned”, you state with a hint of culpability poking through your voice.

The teardrop-shaped burn on your friend’s arm is about the size of your hand. It’s not so bad, however: the skin looks okay, and small, liquid-filled blisters are already starting to appear to soothe the damaged skin.

“Don’t worry, you’re gonna be fine”, you say hurriedly as you draw your supply bag from your sylladex, crouching to frantically rummage through its contents to find your first aid kit. “Just let me find that cream – ”

You are stopped in your tracks by the imperious hand of Equius landing on your shoulder. You swiftly look up to him and your eyes widen at how heartbreaking his expression is right now. He looks…he looks sorry. You didn’t think Equius Zahhak was the kind of troll able to actually look genuinely _sorry_. Your hand goes up to remove his, but you feel the iron of the controlled strength in his bones and instantly know that he won’t let go unless he wants to.

You both stare at each other, and after a mere few seconds you already feel like you won’t be able to bear that look on his face much longer. If you have to withstand much more of that misery, you might just fly off the handle. You literally have nothing to do with the handle. The handle has been harassing you for weeks and you decided to hire a legislacerator and have it fucked up something fierce.

Before you have the opportunity to do anything, however, Equius grunts and pulls his gaze away from yours.

“Nepeta.”

You tense slightly at the sound of your name spoken by his now ridiculously gentle voice. He then gestures at you with his other hand.

“You got burned, too.”

Stunned, you look down and confusedly come to understand that he is right. Your right leg, both your arms and even your chest have caught several stray splotches of the slitherbeast’s gastric acid. The burns on your leg, particularly, looks a lot worse than Equius’, despite having been protected by your pants. Blisters have appeared only at the edges of the wounds while their centers are colored a nasty, inflamed shade of green. In short, Equius had gotten away with just a 2nd degree burn; you didn’t have that chance and got yourself a nice collection of 3rd degree ones. You roughly poke the injured skin. The pain is sharp, but you’ve had worse, so you know it won’t be at its worst until a little while. You’ll manage getting back to your hive before that...you hope, at least.

“Oh...yeah. It’s okay, though, don’t worry! I’m gonna be purrfectly fine”, you say with your usual optimism, and a little bravado.

Equius’ shoulders drop. He slips his hands under your armpits and lifts you back on your feet, very carefully. Then, he turns away. He looks angry. You’re not sure you understand exactly what’s going on.

“I didn’t want you to get hurt because of me…”

This particular remark throws you off-balance. Equius barely mouthed it, like he was muttering to himself, eyes trailing into the open space of the forest for a moment. For a second, you wonder if it was a sarcastic remark, even though the blueblood hardly ever jokes. You’re not even sure what he meant. Is he blaming himself? Is he accusing you of improper behavior? It wouldn’t make sense, since after all, his cerulean is far higher on the hemospectrum than your olive. Saving him was thus not a faux pas, social order-wise. He must have meant something else, but what? Is this about…feelings?

Before you can ask for any precisions however, he suddenly snaps at you, interrupting your train of thought.

“I will carry you back to your hive. If you walk on that leg, it will worsen your injury.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m feeling good enough to walk, I promise!” you reply, the sudden indignation overwhelming you enough to make you miss several cat pun opportunities.

“I’m carrying you back to your hive, and that’s final. It was on my will that we got out here, and therefore I am responsible for what has happened. I ask you – no, I _order_ you to let me fix my mistake.”

Irritated, you pout for a moment. It hurts your pride that Equius would think you aren’t able to take care of yourself. In the few sweeps you’ve been alive, you have done much, much worse than walk home with a bit of burnt skin. You have crawled back to your custodian with broken bones, and you have hunted bigger things than that slitherbeast. You’re not just cuddly and adorable…you’re a predator! Plus, out of the two of you, you’re definitely the one that knows the nature of Alternia the most. Equius doesn’t know anything about the wilds other than what he’s read in his weird musclebeasts periodicals, so you really don’t think he should be acting like he’s in charge or something, hemospectrum be damned.

However…at the same time, you do understand that Equius might feel sincerely guilty about getting you injured while on a trip organized for nothing but his own enjoyment. And…well…it sort of puzzles you, but you definitely don’t want to make him feel bad just to salvage your self-image. You’re not even sure _why_ it matters to you, actually, but it does. One thing remains, though: you have to admit that you sort of enjoy the fact that Equius is concerned about you enough to want to boss you around. You’ve seen how he talks to his lusus and the rest of his entourage; although you've recently found out that he’s an awkward muscly sweatbarn in real life, he acts like a holier-than-thou knight in blue armor with everyone he seems to care about.

So, does that mean…he cares about you? Perhaps kind of how you care about how he feels himself? That only raises more questions and makes you frown pensively. You realize Equius is still waiting for you to answer, though.

“Okay. I’m pawsitively sure I could walk back to my hive, but If it makes you happy, you can carry me. We could even roleplay, you can be the…”

“No.”

You laugh at his fast response, and after a moment, Equius smirks as well. You feel incredibly proud of having managed to draw that sort of response out of the guy. 

You resume searching your bag for your first-aid cream, which you manage to find in the organized chaos of your backpack. It’s not the best kind of medicine there is, but it has the advantage of helping with many types of injuries. Plus, it’s cheap, and after your nights out, you often find yourself in need of a pick-me-up. Your lusus isn’t always around to lovingly lick your wounds.

You give the tube to Equius, who applies some cream on his burnt arm. A few tension lines disappear from his face as the soothing plant extract sinks into his skin. He hands you back the tube and you do the same for your own burns, making a point not to wince as your fingers smear the product over your injuries. The familiar, pleasant cool sensation however draws a contented sigh from you.

You stow the tube back in your supplies and the supplies back in your sylladex while Equius crouches and gestures towards you. You cautiously climb onto the wide back of your friend, suddenly unsure about the level of physical contact that being carried like this implies. You can’t believe that you didn’t think about that right away! You feel the dampness of his sweat-drenched shirt as you huddle close to him, wrapping your arms firmly around his neck. It strikes you once more exactly how big he is for a troll his age. You’re tiny, in comparison to him – although you’re pretty confident that you could take him on in a fight if you had the effect of surprise on your side (and you make sure you always do before pouncing on your prey!).   

You unwittingly quiver when he moves your hurt leg into the bend of his elbow, and he apologizes abundantly while you attempt to laugh it off. Having settled you correctly onto his back, Equius then rises up and silently starts walking towards your hive in long strides.

After a moment, you allow yourself to relax a bit as your body drinks in the heat pouring from the vigorous troll. You feel his vascular pump’s powerful pulse in your own chest, through his back. With the last traces of adrenalin having deserted your body, you suddenly feel very tired, very warm and very, very comfortable, and you hug Equius a bit tighter to avoid dozing off and falling down. This is nice. Nicer than you first thought.

A memory floods back into your mind – when you were still a wriggler, your lusus would often carry you around in one of her mouths. The sensation is very much the same: it’s musky and humid…and you feel incredibly safe. Like everything is and will always be okay. Like even if the world suddenly ended in this moment, at least, it would have ended after having witnessed something that was entirely and unquestionably _right_.

Equius’ studded shoes rasp against the dead leaves on the mossy forest ground, as the twin moons of Alternia bathe you both in their green and purple glow through the canopy of the trees far above. You rest your head in the curve of his neck, closing your heavy-lidded eyes, surrendering to the peace flooding your whole body. Equius shudders faintly when he feels the tickle of your deepened, slowed breath against his skin.

“Eq?” you murmur quietly, almost right into his ear.

“Yes, Nepeta?”

“I was thinking…I know we don’t know each other very well yet, but…would you like to be my meowrail?”

Equius' breath hitches and he falls silent for a moment, leaving you to listen to the rhythmical sound of his footsteps and the cries of the nocturnal avian creatures in the distance. You bite your lip and squeeze your eyes shut, instantly regretting saying what you did. What were you thinking? How could you possibly believe a blueblood would want a greenblood, and a weirdo like you to boot, in one of his quadrants? You burrow your face into his back in an attempt to hide yourself. That’s one more troll who’s going to stop talking to you. Good job, Leijon, real smooth. It always went down this way, didn’t it? How many times did you try to get closer to another troll, only to feel the burning sting of rejection again and again?

But then, just when you’re ready to beg him to forget about it, he answers surprisingly shyly, his voice reduced to nothing but a low rumble.

“I was wondering when would be the good moment to ask you. I suppose you beat me at the speed game again.”

In an instant, all the regret and doubt vanishes from your mind and is replaced by an irresistible flood of joy. A huge grin spreads all over your face; it feels like your chest cavity has suddenly been filled to the brim with so much liquid warmth that it hurts.

You can’t see his face, but by the tone of his voice when he answers, you can tell Equius is probably doing what qualifies as smiling for him.

“Of course.”

You squeal in delight and hug Equius with all your might, which is spectacularly easy since you’re already so close to him.

“Oh wow! I’m so happy!”

***

Later that morning, when both Equius and you are huddled together in your recuperacoon, you timidly fling your arm over his shoulder as he sleeps. You lie awake, gazing at his face, at the blue bruises underneath his eyes, his broken teeth and horn, thinking that this is too good to be true.

"This troll is incredibly fucked up", you think.

That’s what’s so amazing about him. You are both strange trolls, but in very different ways, and you come from very different walks of life. It seems miraculous that you found each other.

You’re unable to stop reflecting on the events of the night. You knew that you risked getting burned if you tried getting close to Equius, and it did happen; just not in the way you thought. The irony makes you smile.

You’ve bandaged your injuries now, and even though they sting harder than they did earlier, you really, really, don’t care. Nothing could take that moment away from you. You recall the rest of that walk back to your hive, the calm and quiet happiness that enveloped both of you, every step Equius took and every beat of his vascular chamber only serving to ascertain one truth in your mind.

Worth it. It was worth it.


End file.
